A team of 30 in California harvests around 212,000 lb. of celery in an 8-hour day. William Sparkes/Demotix. All Rights Reserved.
The collapse of an eight-story garment-factory in Bangladesh in April 2013 killed more than 1000 workers and injured 2,500 more, shocking the world and drawing global attention to the horrific working conditions and lack of safety standards that exist in the Global South. Two years earlier, the death of ten overworked temporary migrant workers in a car crash in Canada raised public awareness of the exploitative working conditions that these migrants endure. Although the settings for these two events could not have been more different—Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world and Canada is one of the wealthiest—they both reflect an international segmentation of labour that characterises a global economy feeding off the vulnerabilities of ‘third world’ labour.
Industrialised economies have long been dependent on the labour that international migrants provide. Migrant workers are attractive to many employers precisely because they are vulnerable: the denial of their rights, status and citizenship prospects leaves them open to various types of exploitation (e.g. lower wages). Governments are complicit in this strategy, and as an increasing number of people migrate to Europe, North America, and other wealthy countries to escape poverty and exploitation, governments are devising ways to maintain these migrants’ vulnerability.
